Sunday, June 11, 2017

The Vizcaya Bridge at Portugalete

The Vizcaya Bridge is a transporter bridge that links the
towns of Portugalete and Las Arenas (part of Getxo) in the Biscay province of
Spain, crossing the mouth of the Nervion River.

People in the area, and even the official website, commonly
call it the Puente Colgante (literally "hanging bridge", used for
suspension bridge in Spanish), although its structure is quite different from a
suspension bridge.

It is the world's oldest transporter bridge and was built in
1893, designed by Alberto Palacio, one of Gustave Eiffel's disciples. It was the solution given by the engineer
to the problem of connecting the towns of Portugalete and Getxo without
disrupting the maritime traffic of the Port of Bilbao and without having to
build a massive structure with long ramps. Palacio wanted to design a bridge
which could transport passengers and cargo, and that could allow ships to go
through. Palacio's shuttle bridge was adequate and could be built for a
reasonable price.

The service was only interrupted once, for four years,
during the Spanish Civil War, when the upper section was dynamited. From his
house in Portugalete, Palacio saw his masterpiece partially destroyed just
before his own death.

On July 13, 2006, the Vizcaya Bridge was
declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. In Spain, it is the only monument in
the Industrial Heritage category. UNESCO considers the bridge to be a perfect
combination of beauty and functionality.

It was the first to use a combination of iron technology and
new steel cables which began a new form of constructing bridges which was later
imitated throughout the world.

The bridge, still in use, is 164 meters long, and its
gondola can transport six cars and several dozen passengers in one and a half
minutes. Pedestrians can actually walk across the top level, taken up and down by elevator - a fantastic trip and one of my personal highlights of visiting Euskal Herria.

It operates every 8 minutes during the day (every hour at
night), all year round.

And in case you wonder what all this has to do with berets... the bridge keeper and workers had their own uniform Basque berets!

About Me

Daan Kolthoff is a writer, living between the hills of Wellington, New Zealand and, when not writing, meditating or walking the hills, he is usually researching, reading about or ordering berets from around the world.